How to Evaluate UI/UX Designers Before Hiring Them
The success of your business depends on the combined efforts of every team member. The designer is no exception. This specialist is essential to your team because they are responsible for making products useful, simple, and enjoyable to use. They work on improving the product's appearance so users can easily understand its value.
But how do you evaluate designers and know you're hiring the right person before they even start working with you?
As an agency specializing in UI/UX design for SaaS, we've been on both sides: the hiring side and the hired side. Below, we share tips on how to identify a good UI/UX designer, discuss common mistakes employers make when evaluating designers, and more.
Common Mistakes Employers Make When Evaluating Designers
Before we dive into design evaluation criteria, let's look at some mistakes recruiters make when hiring UI/UX specialists.
Judging a Designer's Style
If you search online for tips on evaluating potential designers, the first thing many sites recommend is to carefully review the designer's portfolio to see if you like their style.
We completely disagree with this advice. First, good product design is not about the designer's personal style. Good UI/UX designers are not artists who need a unique way of working. They provide a service and should design based on your business logic, user needs, industry trends, and so on.
For example, if Meta were looking for a designer, do you think they would look for someone with work that looks exactly like the Facebook interface? Probably not—they would look for a designer who can understand their business and work with guidelines, style guides, and design systems.
Every project is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all design style. So judging a designer's style is pointless.
Inappropriate Test Assignments
In our view, a test assignment is the most objective way for an employer to evaluate a designer. However, to get a reliable impression of a designer's work, you need to choose the right test assignment. It shouldn't be too long to waste resources on hiring, but large enough to gauge the candidate's competence.
Typically, employers ask candidates to design one screen for an app as a test. But such a task won't give you enough information to evaluate candidates. A single screen may look fantastic, but it won't show how the user got to that point in their journey or what happens after clicking a certain button. In other words, the screen doesn't reveal whether the designer understands your business context or your target audience's needs.
For a trial, we can create a complete user flow, customer journey map, UX audit, or another task that proves the person you're about to work with understands your vision, your users, and the logic of your SaaS.
Asking for a Specific Designer's Portfolio When Hiring a Design Agency
When you hire a design agency, it means there are many designers who could be assigned to your project (and you don't always get to choose one). So how do you evaluate them? Often, our clients want to see a portfolio with all work examples from the specific specialist who will work on their project. But this approach is flawed for the following reasons.
Imagine there are four designers:
- Designer A worked on one large project for a year.
- Designer B worked on four small projects over the past year.
- Designer C was the sole designer on a project.
- Designer D worked as part of a large design team.
Would the portfolios and experience of these four designers differ? Yes.
Does that mean one is more experienced than another? No.
Again, analyzing a specific designer's portfolio won't help when hiring a design agency. Instead, review the agency's case studies to understand their general design approach, and ask for a small test assignment to see if your potential hire understands your needs and if you communicate well together.
Now that we know what mistakes to avoid when evaluating design specialists, let's discuss the aspects to consider for an objective and qualified choice.
Components of a Successful Hire
Reviewing resumes, portfolios, and completed test assignments won't be effective if analyzed in isolation. So the first thing we recommend when choosing a designer is to conduct a video interview where you can ask open-ended questions to gauge the candidate's hard and soft skills.
Define What You Expect to Achieve
Hiring designers to "make the product stand out" or because "you want the app to look nice" can lead to wasted resources. That's why the first step should be to think about what exactly you want the designer to work on and how that aligns with your business goals.
- Identify your business needs.
- Determine what user problems and needs the product should solve, and accordingly, what features it should have.
- Research similar apps on the market and understand how your product can stand out from competitors.
In other words, develop a design strategy based on research. This process doesn't necessarily require a designer—just a deep understanding of your product.
Based on that, create a list of deliverables and design requirements (they may change over time) and start reviewing resumes. Remember, the more specifics you give your potential designer, the easier it will be to choose the right candidate and the fewer issues you'll face during collaboration.
Now let's move on to the key indicators for evaluating a designer's qualities.
Hard Skills
This and the following sections list criteria for evaluating UI/UX designers. You can check whether your potential partner meets these criteria during an interview by asking questions, analyzing portfolio projects, or discussing a test assignment.
Let's start with a list of key methods UX designers typically use in the product design process to create effective design solutions.
Product Discovery
Product discovery aims to understand customer problems and needs. Based on the insights gathered, you can build software people want to use and pay for. It also helps designers prioritize features correctly and focus on improving the product.
Product discovery should be an integral part of the UI/UX design process. When evaluating a potential hire, pay close attention to the following:
User Research
UI/UX designers use data from user research to validate or invalidate assumptions, identify design opportunities, and understand how people interact with the product. There are many user research methods, including user interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting, usability testing, and more.
To assess a designer's awareness of research importance, ask which user research methods they have used in their projects and how those methods influenced their design decisions.
Competitive Analysis
By analyzing existing market solutions, designers can identify gaps to turn into competitive advantages or determine which features buyers expect to find in your software because they are standard for such applications.
To evaluate this skill, ask the potential candidate if they use this research method in their work and how it affects the outcome.
UX Audit
A UX audit aims to identify existing usability issues in a product through research and analysis. Designers can use it to spot critical gaps in the user journey that prevent customers from completing desired actions. This skill is important if you need help redesigning your product.
The best way to evaluate this criterion is to make a UX audit the test assignment. Ask the candidate to analyze a part of your product and suggest possible improvements.
Product Structure
A well-thought-out product structure makes your app intuitive and reduces the time and effort users spend finding what they need. To plan product structure, UI/UX designers create user flows, organizing and labeling each step a user takes to complete a task. Then they can start mapping the user experience with wireframing.
To check whether your candidate can create a coherent product structure, ask them to design a specific user flow as a test assignment (be prepared to give them enough time). Then have them walk you through that flow. For more detail, ask questions like:
- What happens if the user performs *specific action*?
- Why did you choose *specific solution*?
Prototyping
Prototypes show how the app will work and look, but most importantly, they allow designers to test their ideas with potential users.
To evaluate this skill, ask the designer if they create clickable prototypes and what tools they use.
Testing
Various testing methods, such as A/B testing, benchmarking, and others, allow designers to validate the effectiveness of their design solutions, check product usability, see how users interact with the product, and identify friction points that need improvement.
Ask the candidate to share a case from their practice where they had to test their ideas and how they handled it.
Visual Design
Colors, fonts, photography, and illustrations are all parts of your product, and they need to be connected in a structured and cohesive way. We eliminate inconsistencies and create a unified visual language to help you build a scalable product.
Ask designers to explain how an existing user interface is structured and how it could be improved. Also, ask if they have experience working with design systems.
Responsiveness and Accessibility
UI/UX designers should be able to create a user experience that works for everyone who uses the software. Responsive design means your app looks and feels the same on any screen size. Accessible design means that users with disabilities or situational limitations find your app easy to use.
To evaluate these skills, ask the designer how they can make a product accessible to different types of users.
Accessibility in UI/UX Design
In summary, when evaluating a potential partner's design approach, the most important thing is to ensure that the candidate bases every decision on research and user needs, not aesthetics. Ask the potential designer to explain their design process and look for the methods described above.
Soft Skills
Here we discuss personal qualities and interpersonal skills important for connecting with users and collaborating effectively with the team.
Critical Thinking
UI/UX design is about problem-solving. Designers need to use critical thinking to find viable solutions to user problems.
To assess this quality, ask about a specific mandatory feature in one of their previous projects—was it important and why?—and see how multifaceted their perspective is.
Empathy
Recognizing that you are building software to solve real problems for real people drives a designer to create more accessible, understandable, and user-friendly products.
Good designers talk a lot about the people who use their products. When a candidate describes previous projects, listen for whether they mention the needs and problems of that product's users.
Communication Skills
Designers don't work alone—software development is a team sport. So it's crucial to ensure your potential candidate can explain their design to users, product managers, developers, and other designers.
If a designer can clearly articulate their thoughts during the interview, they'll likely communicate well with others too.
Listening Skills and Receptiveness to Criticism
During collaboration, you'll regularly share your vision and feedback. So it's important that the designer is a good listener and open to criticism.
To check if your candidate has this quality, notice how they respond to your comments on their test assignment or previous work.
Proactivity
A designer shouldn't just be a blind executor. Besides listening skills, it's important that your future design partner can make independent decisions and, when needed, back up their opinions.
To evaluate this quality, give a test assignment and see how your potential designer presents their ideas to you.
With that, the list of skills for evaluating a UI/UX designer is complete. Study it, adjust it to your needs, and start building your dream design team. And to make sure you don't miss anything important, here is a downloadable UI/UX designer evaluation checklist.
To Sum It Up
Good UI/UX designers are those who listen to your vision but can also make their own decisions, clearly explaining the reasoning behind them. When looking for such a specialist, you might find it helpful to check out the complete guide to outsourcing IT projects to learn how to delegate tasks effectively.
If we had to give the most important tips for evaluating a designer's skills, they would be:
- Determine why you need a UI/UX designer before starting the hiring process.
- Don't sign a contract with a designer or design agency without talking to the candidate face-to-face or via video.
- For a test assignment, ask them to create a user flow, conduct a UX audit, or do something else that helps you verify that the person you want to work with understands your product's logic.
- Pay attention to whether you're comfortable communicating with the potential hire.